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Leo 2A4 in Syria


Bekro

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Hi Guys,

 

I think you would like to see this picture. Turkish Leo 2a4 has entered in Syria and actively participating to Al Bab siege. Yesterday one Leo shot by ATGM (not sure the model of ATGM). It is reported the tank received a minimum damagae and crew have not injured. 

Leo 2a4.jpg

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20axkr5.jpg

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On one hand, I want to point out that the Leopard 2 design was not meant for this type of combat.  It's a main battle tank made to be employed in the defense of Europe against the attacking Red Army, from hull down or reverse slope defensive positions.  The idea is simply that the hull magazine is never really left exposed to be blasted because the tactics prevent this.

 

The Turkish army, however, seems to have a bad habit of stooging around in their tanks and leaving them parked in all manner of vulnerable positions.

 

 

 

On the other hand...I still find the hull ammo storage to be the biggest negative of the Leo2 design...

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@Maj.Hans

 

The problem is that originaly Leopard 2 was designed to have more or less the same protection as Leopard 1. Only later there was a hasty redesign to integrate composite armor in to tank design, which created some... not very good design solutions in turret structure itself.

 

But what I found even more amusing, at that point everyone in NATO had both data based on israeli experiences and the US already had a proper solution to the ammo cook offs, the simple isolated ammo magazines with blow off panels, and yet in Leopard 2, for some odd reason, when they were redesigning vehicle, instead of doing the same, they left 27 rounds in crew compartment.

IMHO this is example of too great faith in statistics, armor and that always you will be able to fight from hull down position.

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1 hour ago, Damian90 said:

@Maj.Hans

 

The problem is that originaly Leopard 2 was designed to have more or less the same protection as Leopard 1. Only later there was a hasty redesign to integrate composite armor in to tank design, which created some... not very good design solutions in turret structure itself.

 

But what I found even more amusing, at that point everyone in NATO had both data based on israeli experiences and the US already had a proper solution to the ammo cook offs, the simple isolated ammo magazines with blow off panels, and yet in Leopard 2, for some odd reason, when they were redesigning vehicle, instead of doing the same, they left 27 rounds in crew compartment.

IMHO this is example of too great faith in statistics, armor and that always you will be able to fight from hull down position.

That was not a good faith in statics or wrong assumtions. Western germany basicly was a prepared battlefield. So you could be pretty sure to be fighting from hull down BPs.

You can always criticise decisions with hindsight. At that time...with no functioning blastdoors available to secure the turret bunker, keeping the turret smaller and with less ammo made perfect sense.

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25 minutes ago, Grenny said:

That was not a good faith in statics or wrong assumtions. Western germany basicly was a prepared battlefield. So you could be pretty sure to be fighting from hull down BPs.

You can always criticise decisions with hindsight. At that time...with no functioning blastdoors available to secure the turret bunker, keeping the turret smaller and with less ammo made perfect sense.

 

Khem khem, Germany new about isolated ammo storage with blast doors and blow off panels, look at MBT-70 project, then they also competed for new US tank, Americans showed them requirements. It was not a big deal to redesign Leopard 2.

 

Seriously if Leopard 2 would be redesigned I would have nothing against it, but even here, we as a users find more and more flaws or bad decisions done in it's design, which makes lot of things... problematic.

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20 minutes ago, Grenny said:

That was not a good faith in statics or wrong assumtions. Western germany basicly was a prepared battlefield. So you could be pretty sure to be fighting from hull down BPs.

You can always criticise decisions with hindsight. At that time...with no functioning blastdoors available to secure the turret bunker, keeping the turret smaller and with less ammo made perfect sense.

 

Did Leo2 get the turret blast doors later on?  I thought it always had blast doors for the turret?

 

@Damian90 - Like Grenny points out, West Germany was a prepared battlefield.  There were plenty of positions ready for those vehicles to fight from.  In that respect, the design of the Leopard series tanks makes lots of sense.  Leopard 1, for example, features a turret with OK protection from the front, and a very lightly armored hull.  Early Leopard 2's feature a much stronger turret, and a stronger hull, but clearly protection was concentrated more on the turret.

 

Get into your position, blast away, run to the next one, blast away, run to the next, etc.  Keeping total weight low makes you faster and more mobile.

 

 

However, for some reason, I recall reading somewhere that people expected the West Germans to commit to more of a policy of "Not one inch of soil" and simply fight in place until the Reds gave up, went around, or killed them all.  There were also people who expected East Germany to defect and join the West in the event of war, and I think we all know how unlikely that really is, so take everything with a grain of salt.

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1 hour ago, Damian90 said:

 

Khem khem, Germany new about isolated ammo storage with blast doors and blow off panels, look at MBT-70 project, then they also competed for new US tank, Americans showed them requirements. It was not a big deal to redesign Leopard 2.

 

Seriously if Leopard 2 would be redesigned I would have nothing against it, but even here, we as a users find more and more flaws or bad decisions done in it's design, which makes lot of things... problematic.

Again, criticising with hindsight is cheap. At the time the design decisions where made, they made sense. The MBT 70 had the Idea of ammo storing in the turret, but no working concept of blast shielding and crew protection in that regards. All that existed at the time where some rather unconvincing proposals.

These only came to frutation AFTER the design of the Leo2 was finalized in a way, that changing the ammo storage would mean to start from square one...at that time an unacceptable project risk. A better tank available in 10 years is worth batshit of you need a usable tank NOW.

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1 hour ago, Maj.Hans said:

 

Did Leo2 get the turret blast doors later on?  I thought it always had blast doors for the turret?

 

@Damian90 - Like Grenny points out, West Germany was a prepared battlefield.  There were plenty of positions ready for those vehicles to fight from.  In that respect, the design of the Leopard series tanks makes lots of sense.  Leopard 1, for example, features a turret with OK protection from the front, and a very lightly armored hull.  Early Leopard 2's feature a much stronger turret, and a stronger hull, but clearly protection was concentrated more on the turret.

 

Get into your position, blast away, run to the next one, blast away, run to the next, etc.  Keeping total weight low makes you faster and more mobile.

 

 

However, for some reason, I recall reading somewhere that people expected the West Germans to commit to more of a policy of "Not one inch of soil" and simply fight in place until the Reds gave up, went around, or killed them all.  There were also people who expected East Germany to defect and join the West in the event of war, and I think we all know how unlikely that really is, so take everything with a grain of salt.

yes, blast doors for the turret bunker where added later. I'm not even sure if the export batch for turkey had(has) them.

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6 minutes ago, Grenny said:

yes, blast doors for the turret bunker where added later. I'm not even sure if the export batch for turkey had(has) them.

 

Interesting.  Any idea when those modifications were made?  I've never heard about this before, I thought the Leo2 came with a blast door and blow off panels for the turret storage from the initial production models.

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3 minutes ago, Maj.Hans said:

 

Interesting.  Any idea when those modifications were made?  I've never heard about this before, I thought the Leo2 came with a blast door and blow off panels for the turret storage from the initial production models.

Most likely it was done when the hydraulic systems and such where removed from the turrets. 2A4s I've been with in my early service years, def. had no blastdoors or blowout panels.

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OK that's interesting.  I wonder if it has to do with 2A4s that were upgraded from prior models vs 2A4s that were built from the ground up as a 2A4?

 

The US Wikipedia (I know, I know...) says that the 2A1 switched over to ammo racks the same as the US M1 Abrams, so perhaps the blow off panel and door were added at that time?

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11 minutes ago, Damian90 said:

If this is true... then oh god, who is responsible for accepting this thing for service?!

 

If the turks accepted it for service without the blast door and blow off panels that are standard everywhere else...You need to ask them.

 

However, if the Leopard 2 were to have no protection at all for it's ammunition, one could honestly say that it would be no worse than the T-64.  And T-72.  And T-80.  And T-90.  And so on...

 

At least in it's modern incarnation the Leopard 2 has protection for it's turret storage, and some tubes to slide the rounds in the hull into, giving them somewhat better protection than the clamps used in the T64/72/80/90 to attach ammunition to the crew's chairs and scattered around all over inside the tank...

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That's what I thought as well, but apparently Grenny was in some without those.

 

I suppose it's possible that they were removed at some point for some reason, or that perhaps an early batch got built without them.  But AFAIK the Leo2 has had the turret door since basically day 1.

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There are two tanks in the second series of pictures. Both of them hit by ATGMs. The first one -again- received minimum damage, whereas the second one  well you see it. However interestingly the crew survived albeit they are injured.

 

 I wonder what you guys think of that the second one -one that cooked off- left its position once they realised the other tank hit by ATGM. However, they could not realised where the atgm were coming from. This alone show me the laser receiver and active/passive protection are must

 

BTW since the beginning 5 M60T SABRA hit by ATGMs three were completly cooked off and two survived without a serious damage and three LEO 2A4 hit and two survived 

 

 

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10 minutes ago, Bekro said:

...whereas the second one  well you see it. However interestingly the crew survived albeit they are injured.

 

...

 

 

Hmm, from seeing the after detonation frame (including flying pieces of cook off ammo), its hard to believe that crew survived.

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35 minutes ago, Grenny said:

Hmm, from seeing the after detonation frame (including flying pieces of cook off ammo), its hard to believe that crew survived.

 

What if it was the turret storage cooking off, and there was a blast door, and it was closed?

 

 

@Damian90 - The Leopard 2 might not be a/the PERFECT tank, but it's easily my 2nd or 3rd choice for a tank to ride into combat.  The other top pics are going to be the Abrams and Merkava.  I think I'd be willing to take the risk of getting fried into a crispy-critter in a Leo2 in order to get quality optics and an effective main gun.

Edited by Maj.Hans
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16 minutes ago, Bekro said:

 I dont know how serious their injuries but they survived. Not sure after the war with Hezballoh I could say if Merkava any better than  Leo or Abrams. One interesting tank though is Challenger and its chobham armor

 

Such thing as Chobham armor do not exist. There was a program for armor development under codename Burlington in UK and Starflower in US. There were several armor designs developed within that program, and non had a codename. Chobham is just made up codename by someone.

 

So Challenger 1 uses one of the armor types developed within program.

 

The original M1 used armor codenamed as BRL-1 (Ballistic Research Laboratory - 1) or this is how it was called during tests, M1IP and M1A1 got armor codenamed as BRL-2 during tests which was thicker and heavier. With M1A1HA US completely abandoned armor technology codeveloped with UK, and replaced it with their own development we know as HAP or Heavy Armor Package. Heavy Armor Package got 3 generations of development and is now being replaced by so called Next Generation Armor Package or Next Evolutionary Armor.

You can read more about it here -> 

Challenger 2 uses a further development of the British armor package, that is codenamed as Dorchester. However Challenger 2 just like Challenger 1 and Chieftain have entire ammo storage in crew compartment, any ammo cook off can end up like this -> bDske3G.jpg
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@Maj.Hans

There are only two tanks at the moment I would go in to battle, M1 or T-14.

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